AcumatiCaresThe Acumatica Summit 2020 event team is planning the do-not-miss cloud ERP event of the year. Today, our new CMO Todd Wells discusses the many ways in which this will be a landmark Summit, and what members of the Acumatica community can look forward to experiencing.
Todd Wells, CMO since February 2019, has led large-scale marketing and operations at Oracle, Microsoft, and Deloitte Digital. With his extensive marketing and sales experience, Todd knows what it takes to make a cloud ERP event successful. He sat down with me to share some perspective on why Acumatica Summit 2020 (coming January 26-31, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada) is already attracting thousands of customers, partners, developers, and industry analysts.
(If you haven’t yet registered, now is the time. Early-bird pricing ends November 8, 2019, and you don’t want to miss out on the significant conference savings.)
Todd’s perspective on Acumatica Summit 2020
Question: What makes Acumatica Summit 2020 special this year?
Todd: It’s going to be a great event. We expect to see our attendance expand from the 1,500 attendees in Houston last year to upwards of 2,200 in 2020, with many more customers and prospective customers already signed up for track sessions and training. The way the Acumatica Summit has grown year-over-year is just amazing, and it’s getting so there aren’t that many cities that can accommodate us. This year we decided to move the Summit to Las Vegas, which has the conference space we need as well as a wide variety of amenities, and we chose the impressive Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas as our new venue. The luxury resort is a destination location for people who come to the city and it’s located in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip. We’ll host our Monday evening Attendee Celebration Party at Hakkasan, a true Las Vegas nightclub in the MGM Grand.
More importantly, our latest product release is really something special, and the Summit is the place to learn all about it. Acumatica 2019 R2 has well over 100 new features and enhancements, many of which were suggested by the Acumatica User Community, and over 600 pages of release notes. Some of the demos and feature sets we’re planning to show are pretty eye-popping, I’d have to say.
Question: Okay, so the location and the product demos will be new and exciting –what else?
Todd: We have a strong lineup of keynote speakers, Jon, starting with you on Monday morning, and I’m definitely looking forward to hearing our closing Keynote speaker, Dr. Robert Ballard, who found the Titanic. I think the audience is really going to like his take on technology, leadership, goal setting, and innovation through the lens of ocean exploration.
Question: And how about the green/sustainability initiative? You haven’t mentioned that . . .
Todd: It’s still a work in progress, but we’ve started implementing ideas such as using our digital mobile app for conference information instead of printing out a guide, partnering with the resort to make recycling bins more holistically available, using locally grown and sourced food, and more (see Sustainability at Acumatica Summit 2020). Another idea under consideration is buying carbon credits for attendees’ flights to Las Vegas to diminish our environmental impact.
Acumatica is a Seattle/Bellevue-based company, and the Pacific Northwest is a very eco-conscious environment. This is our mindset as well. We want to leverage the totality of our community to participate with us in this effort and will be working with everyone to legitimately reduce our impact.
Outside of Summit, Acumatica has partnered with Tree-Nation through an integration with Sociabble, a social engagement platform our employees and partners use. As part of our internal marketing efforts, Acumatica employees and partners are awarded virtual trees for participation, and Tree-Planet does the actual planting. A CO2 compensation value is placed on each tree, and so far our team has planted 224 trees and offset around 30 tons of CO2.
We have more to do, and Acumatica continues to assess how our actions can positively impact the environment, starting with our annual cloud ERP event.
Acumatica Summit 2020 won’t compromise
My thanks to Todd for taking time to reflect on why our Summit continues to provide an unparalleled cloud ERP experience. Are you signed up for Acumatica Summit 2020? You can be assured that our consistently high-energy, insightful event won’t compromise on the location, the learning, or the fun.
If you’re not yet registered and management isn’t convinced it’s worth it, check out our Summit Justify Your Trip tips. And for any questions, contact our Summit event team today.
